Heart Strike (20 page)

“You were good back there. Damn good,” Richie remarked a few miles later.

And Melissa felt good. Normally a kill gave her the shakes, but this time it hadn't. The man had been the worst sort. He'd rubbed his erection against Melissa's ass the moment he'd grabbed her, and his hand had been headed south into her pants even as they stood there in front of everyone. Drug runner, street thug, and rapist.

And then he'd made to grab Carla.

Melissa would put up with some things, but he didn't get to do that to Carla. Taking him out had been a relief, not a strain. What was it about Carla that commanded such instant loyalty? It wasn't just her who felt that way; the whole team had surged a step forward in the moment before Melissa had pulled the trigger. And it wasn't about protecting “the female” either. If anything, they were scared of the Wild Woman at times…except for the unflappable Mister Kyle.

Kyle had offered her the barest nod in support of her action. His hand signals had the team shifting and ready for imminent combat. Melissa had earned respect for her skills with various teams in the past but had never truly belonged. Probably due to the fact that she was embedded much farther forward than most women. In the heart of the crisis, Kyle had indicated she was on a roll and to go with it.

She still didn't belong here, but she also was no longer ready to send a “Get me out of here!” signal up the chain of command. With the exception of Chad. The two of them were going to have to have it out and real soon now…just not on a plane filled with drugs and two gunsels.

Over the next hours of the flight she and Richie spooked themselves half a dozen times on ships. Who knew the Gulf was such a busy place? Whether they were fishermen, container ships, or Navy frigates, they didn't hang around to ask.

Oddly, the most useful tool was a radar detector for cars that Richie had mounted on top of the dash. It would start to complain and chirp at even the least refracted bits of signal from a ship's radar. Mounted on a swivel base with aluminum foil to either side, they could twist it back and forth to determine the direction of the radar's source and then turn the other way.

“Pretty slick, Richie.”

“Thanks.”

And she could feel herself falling back into a comfortable place with Richie. Except with him, a comfortable place was also very uncomfortable.

The sex, what there'd been of it, had been fantastic. If she ever needed someone to think something through, it was Richie. She just wished there had been more opportunity to find out exactly what he had thought up.

The guy was decent and handsome and smart.

And he was also Delta, not just in her unit but on her team. That last fact was also placing immense strain on an operation that had apparently been functioning just fine. She didn't know how many teams from The Unit were operating in South America, but Colonel Gibson had called this the top team, and only six months out of OTC themselves. They'd been operating at an amazing level prior to her arrival.

Having a relationship with Richie was wrong on so many levels even aside from the military code.

This was a situation right out of
The American President.
The moment when the political activist describes the possibility of a relationship with the President as, “This has catastrophe written all over it.”

The heroine's sister had responded with pretty much the list of positives that had just rolled through Melissa's head—except for the Delta part—and asked if maybe the heroine was overreacting. But there was something about the President being a better-than-average dancer.

“Do you dance?”

“Three left feet,” Richie replied.

“Well, that's a relief at least.”

When Richie asked why, she ignored him and paid attention to the flight.

And she was going to stop trying to understand her life by using movie metaphors someday real soon now.

* * *

It was shortly past two a.m. when they found the fuel barge easily enough, floating off Cozumel in a light swell. Richie landed the
Tin Goose
and taxied up to the craft. After seven hours aloft, he wanted to get out and stretch his legs, but seeing the demeanor of the two men aboard the barge, he didn't think that was such a good idea. He decided to stay right at the controls just in case.

The two guards who had flown with them squatted in the cargo bay door with their rifles at the ready. The rest of the Delta team was also poised on high alert.

“Lesson number one,” he whispered to Melissa over the headset intercom, “don't trust anyone in this business.” They each pulled aside one earmuff so that they could hear what else was going on around them but could still hear each other easily.

“Good advice. But since we're in the business now, what does that mean about you?”

“Me?” Richie placed a hand on his chest in shock. “Oh, I'm trustworthy.”

“But you just said—” and then she cut herself off and groaned.

“Also, everything I say is a lie.”

“I get it. I get it.”

Richie bit down on his tongue. He was always doing that—driving a joke's point home past reason.

“What's lesson number two?”

“Uh…” Richie scrambled for something funny but wasn't hitting on anything. “Number two is…trust
you
no matter what.” It sounded overblown, but it just sort of came out that way.

Lit only by the refueling work lights on the barge filtering in through the square windows of the passenger cabin, she turned in slow motion to inspect him.

“I know, weird isn't it? Now that I've said it out loud, I think that it's a good rule.”

“You don't know me, Richie.”

“I know plenty.”

“Like what?”

“Like you survived Delta Selection and OTC. That the silent Colonel who didn't say jack to me but scared Kyle no end passed you through to our team. We've been doing well, very well. That means that he saw you adding something we could be doing even better. That counts.”

“I guess.”

“And the fact that I couldn't ever want to be with anyone else means I'd better trust you.”

“About that.”

Richie managed to keep his mouth shut and wait. It was hard. For something to do, he checked the fuel gauges. They were taking forever to fill the tanks. They must have the slowest pumps on the planet.

“We had sex just twice—”

“Barely. I recall promising you hours of attention. And we keep being rudely interrupted.”

“And I recall you punching out your friend in my defense.”

He had, hadn't he? Though
punching out
was a bit of an exaggeration based on Chad's nonreaction when Richie's fist had bounced off Chad's chin.

“I didn't ask for that.”

“Didn't have to.”

“That's not the point…”

Richie's attention drifted before Melissa completed the thought. The point was that a hand-cranked pump would fill their tanks faster.

Richie heard her ask if he was listening, which he wasn't.

He twisted in his seat to look back into the main cabin. He snapped his fingers to get Duane's attention and then raised a hand to his forehead as if shading it from the sun to look somewhere and pumped his fist for hurry.

The Delta team flooded out the door past the two guards they'd picked up in the heart of the Orinoco.

Melissa had caught the signal as well and yanked out her sidearm. She was on the side away from the barge, so she turned to cover the two drug runners in the rear.

Richie cracked open his pilot-side door and looked down at the barge.

There'd been two workers visible at the pumps. Now there were four men lying facedown and a stack of weapons with Kyle and Carla over them.

“Crank that pump up,” Richie called out, and Duane slammed the controls onto high.

Chad had once again popped open the top hatch on the cabin for the best view. “Vessel, running fast. About three miles out. Farside of the barge, right where we couldn't see because of the work lights they were shining at us.”

“Damn. If they have anything more serious than a BB gun, we don't have time to get clear.”

“On it,” Kyle shouted. “Get your engines cranking anyway.”

Richie spun back to the plane's controls. Melissa was still sighting her weapon down the length of the cabin at the two drug runners.

“Anything from them?”

“No. If I'm reading them right, they're weren't expecting a welcoming party either.”

“Okay, keep an eye, but start reading me the hot engine restart checklist.” It was certainly the last time he would ever fully shut them down while on a mission.

“While we're still fueling?”

“Go figure.” He eyed the fuel gauges, which were now moving much more rapidly. But a thousand gallons didn't flow in an instant.

She read and he worked the boost pumps and battery switches. And tried not to think about the boat that was approaching.

If it was the U.S. Coast Guard, it would blow their carefully prepared cover with the drug-runner guards.

“They just dowsed their lights,” Chad called out. “Estimate arrival in two minutes.”

“I'm guessing they aren't the Coast Guard,” Melissa remarked between instructions of “Bus Tie Switch Normal” and “Flap Handle Up.”

Richie pulled the flap handle into the up position, “Nope! So they're bad guys.”

“Have I mentioned—Fuel Levers Off—how much I love my new job?” Melissa's tone was drier than a Fort Bragg rifle range.

“It does have its moments.”

He heard a splash and glanced out the window over his shoulder. A couple of large boards had been tossed over the side.

“
Nadar! Rápido!”
Kyle shouted out.

“
Tiburones!”
was the panicked reply.

Richie wouldn't want to go swimming among the sharks either, but since they were only a few kilometers off a major Caribbean tourist beach, he expected it wasn't likely a problem.

Kyle unslung his rifle and pointed it at the complaining man's head. He and his three companions went over the side.

“What are our buddies doing?” Richie asked as he turned back to watch the engine temperatures climb and stabilize.

“In the doorway. Guns ready but aimed high. Still on our side for the moment.”

“One minute.” Kyle had walked along the barge and shouted across at Richie's door, barely clear of the propeller spinning to life. “How's the fuel?”

“Don't ask. Keep pumping.”

“You get another thirty seconds, maybe forty. When I shout, you lay down the hammer,” and Kyle was gone.

“Should we tell him that the Twin Otter doesn't have a hammer?” Melissa's tone was wry. A turboshaft engine didn't simply engage. And the large propellers took time to spin up and more time to bite the air.

“No, let's not spoil his fun.”

“Wonder what he has cooked up.”

Richie appreciated Melissa's perfectly calm tone. She was definitely Delta down to the core. He wanted to turn and see what the rest of the team was up to, but he didn't have time to dare; he'd simply trust that the rest of the team was on it. At the moment his job was to get through the next two minutes of the start-up list in under thirty seconds.

“Skip that. Next,” he started saying as Melissa read instructions first from the After-Start Checks then the Run-up Checks.

In moments, she too was editing the list as she went.

Somewhere in the blur, there was a loud rattle of fuel hoses being unlocked and a hand double-slapped on the plane's hull hard enough for the sound to echo in the cockpit.

Richie advanced the throttles before he even heard the shout to go and then prayed that they hadn't missed anything critical.

A glance showed Duane tossing the dual hoses back onto the barge; it might have been a trick of the light but the hoses appeared to still be pumping liquid fountains of Jet A fuel. Duane jumped off the barge and onto one of the aircraft's pontoon floats as the plane started moving. Kyle and Carla must already be aboard; he certainly hoped so.

The
Tin Goose
moved fitfully across the waves as he unfeathered the props and the engines hesitated under the sudden load change, a deepening of their whining pitch.

Then, as Kyle's shouts became more urgent, Richie called for Melissa to douse all of the interior cabin lights; only the instrument panel lights remained on. The exterior running lights had been switched off before they had even left the Orinoco. They'd landed in Cozumel with only the briefest flash of landing lights so that he could see the waves, but he wanted to be invisible.

The props bit into the wind and dragged the plane forward and away from the barge, but the first hundred feet went by at an agonizingly slow pace.

“We'll take off low, and then bank hard to lose them.”

“If we get off the water,” Melissa offered, again in that dry tone that he couldn't tell whether was fun or serious, at least not without seeing her face.

“I'm always an optimist,” Richie declared as he begged the plane for more speed. At max throttle they were a full thirty seconds from stand-still to flight, thirty-five with a full fuel load. He considered trying to zigzag while still on the surface, but that would only waste speed and delay their takeoff. Besides, he needed to stay in the furrow between the waves to get safely airborne; at a meter high these waves were big enough that he wasn't sure if he could take off across them.

“Not a lot of ways to hide sixty feet of airplane in the open,” Melissa's tone wasn't as calm as a moment before.

“Mind reader.” Takeoff should be possible around sixty knots, roughly seventy miles an hour.

“Forty,” Melissa read off. “Forty-five.”

Richie glanced at the gauges—still a hundred gallons from full. But that wasn't the worry any longer. Now he was worried about someone firing an incendiary round into the nine hundred gallons they had managed to load into their belly tanks.